THE JEANNE PROJECT: PART 2 – LAUNDRY ROOM DRAMA

The fact is, no one likes spending any substantial amount of time in the laundry room. And for this there are many obvious reasons, but I’d like to point out one, not so obvious reason that I think you’ll find groundbreaking & enlightening…well, maybe just funny & entertaining, regardless, you’ll start viewing your laundry room in a whole new light. So here’s my theory friends…your laundry room is a passive-aggressive, attention starved, bully. Kind of like that mean girl that’s always staring you down & giving you passive-aggressive compliments like, ”Oh hey, you look better than you’ve looked in a long time!” Yeah, you know the kind I’m talking about. The ones that build you up just to tear you down. I mean think about it, every single time you walk into your laundry room she’s staring you down, looking at you like you’re just SO unorganized. Glaringly antagonizing you by making you feel like you’re constantly behind & will NEVER get caught-up. Then, just as you’re getting all the laundry washed, dried & folded, here comes someone with more dirty clothes just to be piled-up in what, if only for a mere second, was once you’re nice, clean, oh so “caught-up” laundry room. And you know what happens next…here she comes again, rearing her ugly, passive-aggresive head & bullying you until there is so much animosity that you finally give up. You let her (your laundry room) win. You do what any normal girl would do. You start ignoring her because it’s just too stressful & simply not your style to engage in such childish behavior. Then, as time goes by, your laundry room starts to claim victory. She’s fooled you into believing she has the upper hand. And as uncharacteristically of you as it is, you actually start to believe her.

Here’s where I, THE PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZER, steps in. I have the ability to look at a space & immediately give you the skinny on why it’s controlling you, why it’s working against you, & why it’s causing your Feng Shui to fizzle. The answer is really quite simple. What you’ll notice is that the reasons your space is bullying you have a striking similarity to the mean girl & her motives. Like the mean girl, she (your space) is lacking in her own identity. She doesn’t feel very stylish or put together, which leads to a very unbecoming host of self-confidence issues. Her only defense is to constantly tear you down with her contrived effort of making herself look good. And to be completely honest, when you walk by her every morning wearing your amazing Scarlet outfit, her jealously goes through the roof. All she can think about is how perfect you look & how her clothes are just messy & scattered everywhere. And how if she only had some stylish labels to wear, she would feel much more organized & put together. And you can guarantee, when you walk back in the door that evening, there she will reside, lurking & waiting to pounce with her passive-aggressive behavior, trying to make you feel as if you are even more behind & unorganized as ever with your laundry. Just a little something she calls sweet revenge.

As “The Organizer”, this is the point where my assistance becomes crucial. Just when you can’t deal anymore, I bounce in all sunshine & skinny jeans, look the mean girl laundry room straight in her face and say, “GAME ON!”

All great organizers have very tactical strategies when it come to projects like this. And my strategy is simple, yet extremely effective. I take the high road! Instead of putting the mean girl laundry room in her place, I extend an olive branch. I help her transform into what she’s been dying to be all along. I dress her up in stylish, eye-catching attire & give her all the beautiful labels she’s been dreaming of for years. She finally starts to see her self worth and feel a new sense of functionality & pride. And best of all, the animosity quickly starts to disappear. She realizes that she really likes you & starts trying to cultivate a relationship with you. A relationship where she is working with you as opposed to against you. When you walk in the door, she provides a system that fosters you in keeping your laundry room organized, functional & beautiful, as it should be. Laundry room drama disappears & all are happy in laundry land.

A look at the mean girl laundry room before her transformation:

The photo below is where Jeanne stored her dirty laundry. And that unevenly hung shower curtain rod is where her beautiful hang-to-dry clothes had to live while they were drying. Not good. Not good.

Now, I want you to remember the first photo you saw. The one with the tennis rackets & uneven bar. What you’re about to see is that same exact wall.

WAIT FOR IT…………WAIT FOR IT……………

A transformation to pure laundry room bliss…

And these labels! Oh how I love thee, beautiful labels! Just imagine a laundry room where everything has a home!

And that sad uneven bar for hanging clothes…HELLO, how happy is this new one??? And who doesn’t love reading positive words of inspiration while doing the laundry???

Now her cleaning supplies & dryer sheets are snug as a bug in a rug in their pretty new home. They’re so proud – just look how they’re glowing!

Jeanne also needed a community calendar to make sure she & Oskar were on the same page with their busy lifestyle. Well…she go it! With an added bonus of a chevron magnet board for displaying any important memos. Oh, & please take notice of the keys hanging there saying, “Here we are, you’ll never lose us again!”

If you remember the the photos of the cluttered drawers before, I found endless amounts of hardware & batteries. I made a new home for them as well. These plastic, divided containers work perfectly for storing things like that!

As a professional organizer, I sincerely care about my clients satisfaction & the efficiency of my work. So I’ve implemented a little thing I like to call the “ROC Test”. ROC stands for “Random Organization Check-up”. I love doing these! Sometimes I like to just show up for an unannounced visit (I only do this with my close friends – because I can) and do a little checkity-check on how the organizational system that I implemented is working.

I’m proud to say that when I sprung a ROC on Jeanne, she passed with flying colors!!! Look at how she has kept her laundry room in total order. When I saw all those dirty clothes living in their proper home, I could hardly contain myself. She is no longer being bullied by her mean girl laundry room. She’s in the driver’s seat now. Watch out!

As I come to a close in this extra-long, laundry room post, I’ll leave you with my exact thought on this project…